AuthorTopic: Dell Inspiron 1100 VIDEO (Read 3136 times)

OK I am bout ready to give up on this one.....I know Granny has one going (and I give her a standing ovation on this one) but I cannot get video on this thing. It has that brookdale intel video. Now here is the thing. I put the VL KDE live disk in, it worked full screen and all...installed same, and after the reboot it was still there. Did another reboot and PUFF Black screen. I've tried VL light, and VL standard (which would be my preference) but at this point I'll take anything that will work. (for the record I tried a couple other distros too and they did not work correctly either. Can anyone tell me why the LIVE CD had video, and the first reboot, then NADDA?? I mean solid black after the verbose boot up stuff.

For some reason there is no "linux gui/linux tui at the log in screen only "linux" which of course boots to VL Just lost on this one...Any help??

Didn't try slack, but tried absolute (the latest release) I installed that and at least it would boot to an 800x600 screen. I just don't understand how it works on the live CD and then not after the intstall. I'm not quite done with it yet but man just been fighting and fighting this one. Thanks.

Probably, the LiveCD got lucky picking video driver, refresh and resolution. Then, during installation, it did another hardware detection and chose different settings.

You can get to command line from the boot prompt. Select the boot entry line and press the Tab button. This makes it editable. Add a space and a 2, then press enter. It should boot to runlevel 2 (text only). Log in as root.

Next you should run command "vliloconf" and re-install the boot loader. By default it will now add a "TUI" option.

I wish I could help, as my Inspiron 1100 graphics are working decently. I don't recall doing anything special. I did put kernel 2.6.31.8 on the laptop in hopes of easier wireless networking. All I can say is I'm using the plain xorg driver called intel and I do have 24-bit 1024x768 resolution.

A bit of history on this laptop--Originally my daughter-in-law was using it with Windows XP and it came with 256 megs of RAM and a 20-gig hard drive. When she got a new laptop, she gave this one to her son, who was around 10 at the time. He managed to slow it down to unusability. They live far away, but when they were here for a visit in 2009 they brought along the laptop in hopes I could restore its speed (which was never that great anyway, with just 256 megs of RAM for XP). I did get it going after I got the viruses and malware off of it but I suggested VectorLinux to prevent the inevitable re-infestation. I installed VL6 Standard and don't recall any problems with video. Grandson got a new laptop for Christmas, so they gave the old Dell to me.

The laptop has a quirky CD-RW/DVD-ROM combo drive. It has trouble seeing some home-burned CDs. In fact, I had to create a bootable flash drive for VL6 Standard ISO with unetbootin in order to install Standard. Anyway, at that time I had no problem with the video. When I got the laptop for myself, I replaced the 20-gig drive with a 128-gig drive I had removed from a dead laptop and I replaced the RAM with two 512-meg sticks. I installed VL6 Light, no Windows. I used Light rather than Standard because the computer would boot from the Light installation CD but it wouldn't boot from the Standard installation CD and I no longer had the bootable flash drive I had used the year before. I think there were some video problems upon installation but somehow I got it working, probably with the help of my friend Google.

I updated the kernel to 2.6.31.8 and don't recall losing video. I did run into some problems, though. I think I got black screens upon login but after a reboot or two or four I did get video. I've had some problems with X causing a black screen with no keyboard or mouse response, requiring a turnoff. These are unusual now. I occasionally lose video completely and get a black screen after I tell IceWM to shut down, but the computer is not locked up and it completes the operation. Once in IceWM, I have no problems with video although the glxgears scores are terrible, as you'd expect. When I turn on that computer later today, I'll look through xorg.conf to see if I made any changes. If you start in text mode (runlevel 2), you can edit xorg.conf and the changes will be reflected the next time you run startx. I haven't found the Xorg log files in /var/log to be helpful. When you're working in text mode, you can do quite a lot of experimenting without rebooting as long as you don't lose video completely. Control-Alt-Backspace usually worked to get me back to a console if X failed. Just be sure to save a copy of your original xorg.conf file under another name so that you can easily restore to default if your changes don't help.

We have another old laptop with intel video (different chip). I tried kernel 2.6.31.8 on it but the video vibrated and jumped around badly with that kernel. I went back to 2.6.27.29 and video is okay again.

I do recall spending a lot of time on Google related to one of these video chips but I don't remember if it was on the Dell or the other laptop (Toshiba).

If you do manage to get the Inspiron video working *once*, it'll probably work again after some number of restarts. It seems to settle in once it runs a few times and the problems lessen. I'll get back to you after I inspect my xorg.conf on the Dell.--GrannyGeek

ok I"m gonna get back after it again later. Thank you so much for all the input. I know darn good and well if it boots off a live CD I should be able to make it work while installed. Yes this laptop is a dog, only 128 cache on the CPU but, I think it's good enough for the grand kids and some stuff...It was a freebie so, I wanna make it work.

On a side note I just did an IBM thinkpad and when I updated the kernel it had that video jumping also, so as you I went back to the install kernel. Thanks Granny (et al) for the help. Granny I am appreciative of you taking the time to look at the config and see if it helps. I just don't want to give up......and it's still too usable to put into the trash...

I'm using the Inspiron 1100 right now. Looking through xorg.conf reminded me that I did have a mammoth struggle getting video to work and I combed through Google looking for solutions.

I'm attaching a copy of my /etc/X11/xorg.conf (with a txt extension added). Two things I know I changed were in Section "Device":Option "NoAccel" "true"Option "DRI" "false"

I found these suggestions in a Google link to something in the Ubuntu forums (if I recall correctly). I don't know if the changes were what did it, but they certainly didn't hurt. The xorg file isn't horribly long, so a line-by-line comparison with yours may reveal something.

>> Yes this laptop is a dog, only 128 cache on the CPU but, I think it's good enough for the grand kids and some stuff. >>

Mine is no longer a dog! Upping the RAM to 1 gig made a tremendous difference. I'm luxuriating in 128 gigs of hard drive space. The laptop is working so well that I'm thinking of buying a new battery for it; the original battery is totally dead. I don't use the laptop away from home, so I'm trying to decide if the convenience of carrying the laptop to the kitchen table without the power brick is worth the cost of the battery. With VL6 Light the laptop performs very well--well enough that I have no desire for a newer machine as long as this one is functioning.

My 7-1/2-year-old Toshiba's screen stopped working; probably the backlight or the connector to the video system. I've hooked it up to an old 15" LCD monitor that wasn't doing anything and put it on a desk with USB keyboard and mouse and we're using it as a desktop. So I hope the Dell continues to work because if it dies, I'd have to replace it because I can't do without a laptop.

Be sure to let us know if you make any progress with your video.--GrannyGeek

Didn't try slack, but tried absolute (the latest release) I installed that and at least it would boot to an 800x600 screen. I just don't understand how it works on the live CD and then not after the intstall. I'm not quite done with it yet but man just been fighting and fighting this one. Thanks.

I'm still working (off and on) on the thing. I can tell you it has "just peachy" video on the live CD. I'm going to go back to square one on it when I have time, I just did a install for my son, and he's ecstatic to leave windows and come to vector. (it's also helped to renew our communications which was faltering some). He said his old IBM is quicker than his buddies brand new laptop running 7. Anyway I'll do more checking and report back soon. Thanks everyone and I think "we'll" get it.